Sotheby's
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/31/nfolio31.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/31/ixhome.htmlShakespeare book sold for a guinea could fetch £4m
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 31/03/2006)
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Sotheby's edition also has an extraordinary history, and appears never to have left London. It belongs to Dr Williams's Library, the country's pre-eminent deposit of puritan, Protestant non-conformist and dissenting books and manuscripts, founded in the early 18th century from a bequest of books, including the First Folio and a £50,000 endowment by Dr Daniel Williams, a prominent 17th century dissenting minister.
The library, now in Gordon Square in central London, has 300,000 titles but only 1,000 members and says that it receives no public funding and needs to sell its most valuable asset to secure its future. Insuring the First Folio accounts for one third of its annual premiums.
Dr David Wykes, the director of the library, said that the institution was "sorry" to sell the volume but it had watched its valuation grow from £17,000 in the 1960s to £600,000 15 years ago with a mixture of concern and amazement.
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The volume is in its original mid-17th century binding and has the extra attraction of numerous notations. An unknown scholar, probably in the mid-17th century, has underscored or marked hundreds of lines. His work appears to have been erratic.
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Another 17th century hand, possibly that of a naughty child, has written something quite different on one page.
The single sentence reads: "But I desire the readers mouth to kis the wrighteres arse."
Dr Roe said: "This does not devalue the volume. It adds to it. It demonstrates that it is a good, honest, working book.''
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